Hey everyone! My name is Laura Vegas, and I was so excited when I got an email asking me to be the October Guest Designer! I have always been a huge fan of My Mind’s Eye products, all the way back to the little kid die cuts from forever ago (which I’m 99% sure we still have in the closet somewhere). I love My Mind’s Eye’s pattern papers, because of their texture and thickness, and great tone-on-tone patterns. And their embellishments make it so easy to add lots of fun details to my projects.
A little bit about me. I live in Manteca, California. People never know where that is. So I usually explain that I live about 90 minutes East of San Francisco, and 60 minutes South of Sacramento. Those cities are more recognizable than my little city. I live with my husband, Joe, who works as a Night Crew Manager in grocery, and also umpires baseball as a side-job, about 10 months out of the year. We have two girls, Alyssa (15) and Sarah (12), who are great sports about being in front of my camera at a moment’s notice. I spend lots and lots of time driving the girls to and from all of their school and sporting activities, and we can usually be found on the soccer field on the weekends. I work as a Daycare Provider, out of our home, which allows me to always be around for my girls. We all love my daycare kids to pieces, and they truly become little extensions of our family.
I started out scrapbooking almost 17 years ago. That piece of information just really dated me, didn’t it? LOL. I began, like so many of us did, with Creative Memories. My layouts had pen-doodled borders and titles, tons of Mrs. Grossman stickers, and photos cut into circles and ovals, using 7 different deckled edged scissors. About 10 years later, and after a huge progression in my style, I started teaching classes at a local scrapbook store. Around this same time, I started submitting to magazines and contests, and managed to have just a teensy tiny bit of luck with those. After teaching for a little over 2 years, the local scrapbook store decided to close their doors, and I put more energy into establishing myself within the scrapbooking industry.
Now-a-days, my scrapbooking is definitely more of a part time job, than just a hobby. But it’s a job that I LOVE doing! I’m very driven by assignments and deadlines, and I actually have a hard time scrapbooking without them now. I’m a professional procrastinator, and I seem to create my best when I leave things until the very last minute.
I am hugely driven by product, bright and fun colors, and great photos. I will either start a layout with great photos in mind, or by product that I am dying to use. My journaling is almost always the last thing that I add to a layout, and I never plan what I am going to say, until I have my title on the page to guide me. My favorite things to create are layouts, but I enjoy making cards as well. Altered projects and mini albums are my least favorite, although when forced to do them, they’re usually not half bad.
If you’d like to learn more about me, and see more of my work, visit my blog at www.lauravegas.typepad.com.
Let’s welcome Laura as our Guest Designer this month. Leave a comment on this post by Sunday, October 9, 2011 at midnight. We will randomly select one winner to win Laura’s favorite My Mind’s Eye things!
